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Foreign Rights: Available Now: AnthropologyFree Trade and Freedom by Karla Slocum Kyongju Things by Robert Oppenheim Weaving a Way Home by Leslie Van Gelder When Women Have Wings by Donna F. Murdock Free Trade and Freedom: Negotiating Neo-Liberalism with Place in a Caribbean IndustryKarla Slocum Rights: World Free Trade and Freedom: Negotiating Neo-Liberalism with Place in a Caribbean Industry is the first ethnography of St Lucia, and one of very few ethnographic treatments of the present-day banana industry. The book describes how local banana workers make claims on the St. Lucian state while, even because, their agricultural market goes global. Free Trade and Freedom will be attractive to audiences in anthropology, economics, history, development studies, sociology, geography, cultural studies, food studies, Latin America/Caribbean studies, globalization studies, social movements studies, studies of agricultural economies, studies of cultural politics, and studies of the African diaspora. Karla Slocum is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Spring 2006 Kyongju Things: Assembling PlaceRobert Oppenheim Rights: World Kyongju Things is a historical ethnography of place amidst objects in the contemporary city of Kyongju, South Korea, between the authoritarian 1970s and the democratizing late 1990s. Kyongju is the archeological site of the royal capital of the first millennium kingdom of Silla, and thus the locus of a historical past that has been especially important to the construction of the South Korean state in the context of Korean division since 1945. Because its ancient objects have mattered a great deal not only to its citizens but to the South Korean state and a variety of international actors, Kyongju is the site of a unique intersection of Kyongju "things," which Robert Oppenheim describes as mutually interactive conceptual, factual, historiographic, and material objects that emerge and then act to stabilize, disrupt, or otherwise interfere with other objects or political arrangements. As Oppenheim discusses through his use of actor-network theory (ANT), which posits that both human and nonhuman agents act upon and with one another, not all of the Kyongju "things" are physical objects; Oppenheim also considers knowledge objects and conceptual forms, routinized techniques or procedures, and the forms and templates of subjectivities—specifically, the authority, agency, and ethical demands offered or imposed by a variety of subjectivity forms. Kyongju Things pursues place as an ontological relationship and locality as a matter of agency, of doing and not just meaning, thus shifting away from previously dominant idioms of representation, imagination, and belonging in anthropological place studies. It traces ways in which different social actors—notably including the South Korean state, national and resident activist groups, and Kyongju's "culture world" of native-place historians and cultural authorities—have worked through and upon relations. Oppenheim uses the controversy spurred by the proposed routing of South Korea's first high-speed railway line through Kyongju, to detail a battle in which the futures of Korean democracy, national culture, and Kyongju development were all said to be at stake. By offering an actor-network consideration of the making of place, Oppenheim foregrounds issues of "being amidst" the politics of technocracy and expertise, of facts and things. Thus, while Kyongju Things tells interesting histories and will appeal topically to multiple Asian studies readerships, it has the potential to reach a broader audience in anthropology, science studies, and related fields. Robert Oppenheim is Assistant Professor of Asian Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. Spring 2008 Weaving a Way Home: A Personal Journey Exploring Place and StoryLeslie Van Gelder Rights: World Weaving a Way Home is an inquiry into the complex relationship between people, place, and story. Focusing on three central areas: wildness, home, and ruins, Leslie Van Gelder explores the way in which people engage with the world around them and how solutions to contemporary environmental challenges can be found in the heart of our emotional relationships with Places. Weaving a Way Home explores two ideas. First, that we, as humans, need to recognize our tacit relationships with places because in comprehending our place, we understand our capacity for intimacy, relationship, and love. The solution to environmental issues will not come from a "clean up the mess before it's too late" approach, but instead through the exploration of that which we love and what we do to protect those whom we love. To this, Weaving a Way Home looks at three seminal areas of human-place interaction: wilderness, home, and ruins. Second, that the way in which we develop and maintain relationship with places is through anthropomorphized relationships with the nonhuman world. When people describe feeling a "sense of place" or "being at home," they are speaking to the feeling of harmony that comes from living in, with, and feeling of a place. At base, our unspoken relationship with certain places is one of our deepest expressions of love. That love drives us to act, fundamentally shapes who we are, and offers the greatest potential for shifting the unbalanced relationship humanity has developed with the world around us. Leslie Van Gelder is Faculty Chair for the College of Education at Walden University. Spring 2008 When Women Have Wings: Feminism and Development in Medellin, ColombiaDonna F. Murdock Rights: World In When Women Have Wings, Donna F. Murdock demonstrates how changing political and economic demands may ultimately compromise feminist NGO's long-held commitments to democratic development practice focused on grassroots empowerment. Based on sixteen months of ethnographic field research with a local feminist NGO and a community center project conducted with women in one of Medellín's working-class districts, When Women Have Wings illuminates both working- and middle-class women's perspectives on the change towards professionalization, and provides an unusual ethnographic lens on the process as it unfolded. By highlighting how the women's center tried to negotiate feminism and professionalization pressures with detailed descriptions of the encounters between working class women and middle class women, Murdock shows the frailty and complexity of cross-class organizing, and the ways this process may be threatened by professionalized NGO styles. When Women Have Wings thus addresses issues of concern to scholars working on feminist development, professionalized feminist NGOs and grassroots democracy, and Latin American women's movements, and will contribute much-needed insight into the everyday workings of the problems of professionalization and democratic development. Donna F. Murdock is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Sewanee: The University of the South. Fall 2008 |
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